[GUIDE] Malphite - DPS? Nonsense. Shut up and take your boulders.

[GUIDE] Malphite - DPS? Nonsense. Shut up and take your boulders.

EDIT 12/16/2012
Please note: this guide is EXTREMELY outdated. I would not depend on it as a guide to Malphite in anything but playstyle. Mpen/tank Malphite is still a viable build, but the item build will look significantly different than what is present here.

Introduction:
Malphite is a crazy rock fellow that rants on about how he's rock solid. He's a great counter to right click and win physical DPS characters and brings a real presence to your team both early and late game. This guide will not cover a jungling or DPS Malphite build. Instead it will use magic penetration and magic regeneration to make the most of his spells.

The result of building Malphite in this way is a character which dominates the laning phase early game and provides an excellent source of damage and teamfight initiation late game. It's a good build on both Twisted Treeline and Summoners Rift.

Abilities :
Passive - Granite ShieldMalphite is shielded by a layer of rock which absorbs damage up to 10% of his maximum health. If he has not been hit for 8 seconds, this effect recharges.
This is an excellent passive that insures that whatever small harassment you take will be entirely laughable. Note that the effect will begin recharging if you take any damage even if the shield itself is not broken. So be brave, be bold, and keep hucking rocks.

Q Ability - Seismic Shard(Active): Using his primal elemental magic, Malphite sends a shard of the earth through the ground at his foe, dealing damage upon impact and stealing movement speed for 4 seconds
This is Malphite's core ability, at least as far as this guide is concerned. You are going to level it up every chance you get because it is an excellent tool for harassing, saving teammates, stealing neutral buffs, and everything else you could want it for. Don't you just hate it when people pop ghost and run away? Not anymore, because if you hit them with one of these babies you'll gain a good portion of their speed. If you pop your own ghost after that they're not getting away from you big boy. It's laughable when they cast exhaust on you because at max level you can steal all of that movement speed right back!

The key here is constant harassment. Sure, maybe at the start they'll be laughing off its pitiful damage. But once you get a few levels on your rocky frame seismic shard will start scaring them away from their precious gold and experience. You don't have to aim it, and you don't have to worry about hitting their creeps by accident.

Use it every time it's off cooldown! Choose whoever you think you can wear down the easiest in your lane and proceed to bully them. Stinky little casters are a prime target, but you'd be surprised at how you can even wear down beefies like Shen.

W Ability - Brutal Strikes(Passive): Malphite's attacks hit splash for a percentage of his attack damage.
(Active): Increase Malphite's armor and damage for 6 seconds.
This is an excellent ability for a DPS Malphite build, but this is not a DPS Malphite build. This is the last thing you will level up. Now, if you've got the mana to spare then sure pop it every now and then. It will marginally power up your armor and therefore your ground slam. The passive effect is not bad for farming minions mid-late game, but that's about it.

Pop it for neutral buffs, dragon, pushing turrets, and just before a teamfight if you have the mana to spare (and you generally should).

E Ability - Ground Slam(Active): Malphite slams the ground sending out a shock wave that deals magic damage based on his armor and reduces the attack speed of enemies for 4 seconds.
This is an excellent ability that does deceptively good damage and slows attack speed to boot. It's great for insuring that you grab plenty of last hits early on. When pushing turrets unmolested I recommend that in between smacking the turret you take a few moments to walk forward and ground slam the caster section of the incoming minion waves. Later in the game this will instantly kill them and ensure that your push lasts as long as possible.

When using ground slam against champions it's important that you lead them with it. Do NOT use ground slam when you're directly behind a fleeing champion as you will almost always miss with it. Next to them is all right, right in front of them is better. You have seismic shard to chase with (and ghost if you choose to bring it) so it's not as bad as it sounds. Just be sure not to waste your chance to stack more damage on them.

R Ability - Unstoppable Force(Active): Malphite ferociously charges to a location, damaging enemies in a small range and knocking them into the air. Malphite cannot be stunned during his charge.
This ult is beautiful. Good range, great damage, can hit multiple targets (and you should try to).
Passes through walls, cannot be interrupted (anymore!), puts you in perfect position for a ground slam.

This, quite simply, is the best initiation skill in the game. Typical scenario: teamfight is about to happen, they get a little too close together, you charge in and ground slam, slowing the carry with seismic shard. Your team sweeps in right behind you and performs cleanup. It's pure beauty.

Unstoppable force has a 1:1 AP ratio. If you sense a teamfight coming you might as well guzzle an elixir of brilliance. Not only will this beef up your damage but the next unstoppable force will come just a little quicker.

Of course, I don't feel that you should limit yourself to using it only in teamfights. If by using unstoppable force you can save a teammate (and/or yourself) or kill the enemy carry, or turn an enemy turret push into mincemeat, go ahead and use it. Its cooldown is significant, but it's not THAT long, especially once you've farmed up a bit and have some cooldown reduction from your items.

Skill preference:
R>Q>E>W

Masteries:
9/0/21 build on Malphite. Key masteries to get are Archaic Knowledge and Sorcery in offense and Meditation, Intelligence, and Presence of the Master in utility. Magic penetration, cooldown reduction, and mana regen are emphasized.

Runes:
Since we are building a Malphite which will rely primarily on his spells and spell damage, we will stack his rune page similarly to how we would for any caster. I prefer to emphasize magic regeneration over magic penetration just so that he can easily maintain his mana pool throughout the game and remain a consistent threat. Malphite has mana problems without some form of mana regeneration.

UPDATE:QUICKSLIDE has brought up a good point in that the mana regen/5 seals and quintessences could be substituted for their scaling versions for more mana regen fairly quickly into the game. As seismic shard does not become truly effective until you are able to level it to 3, this may be the route to go.

Items:
Core items for this Malphite are Haunting Guise and Glacial Shroud. To this end, I recommend your first item be a ruby crystal as it will start you towards Guise as well as synergize well with your passive shield and prevent effective counter harassment early in the game.

Boots:
90% of the time I suggest you go for Mercury Treads. Although the extra armor from Ninja Tabi and the movespeed from Swiftness are tempting, they are overall pretty unnecessary. Remember, Seismic Shard steals movespeed. If you pack Ghost it's very rare that there is someone you can't catch. The dodge from Tabi is nice, but come on you're already stacking armor like nobody's business. You don't really need more of it.

Malphite's weakest point is his low resistance to magic damage. Mercury treads will help to alleviate that somewhat in addition to their much coveted reduction to crowd control. If however the team you are facing is woefully low on magical damage dealers you might as well grab sorcerer's shoes for the increased magic penetration.

Luxury:
After you've built haunting guise, some sort of boots, and glacial shroud, anything else is really luxury. You can go several ways with this:
Upgrade Glacial Shroud to Frozen Heart - this is pretty much a no-brainer, it's one of his recommended items and truthfully it is a very strong choice on him.
Aegis of the Legion- if nobody else on your team is building one, you might as well.
Sunfire capes - Hell yeah brother, more health and more armor and an AOE. Sunfire capes synergize well with Malphite, but in a typical game you won't be able to build more than 1 of them I find.
Chalice of Harmony - a little more magic resist and mana regeneration never hurt anybody, build if you find yourself struggling against casters
Rageblade- Uh oh we're approaching hybrid territory here. It is a strong item though for pushing turrets late game and adding a little extra damage to your melee during a teamfight.
Guardian Angel - Solid on any character, period. I'm wondering if they're going to nerf it one of these days because it's just a little too good.
Randuin's Omen - More health, more armor, and more slows! Nothing wrong with any of that! Thanks Azghyn Nite for the suggestion.

Items I recommend you DO NOT build:
Rylai's Crystal Scepter- it's nice, but it's expensive and AP just isn't as effective on Malphite to justify the high price of this item. You've already got plenty of slows, so the slowing aspect of it is not that powerful.
Thornmail- too expensive. You shut down physical carries without it. I can't justify it over a Sunfire Cape.

Summoner Spells:
I typically pack Ghost and Ignite.

Ghost is great for covering distances quickly which can stop an enemy from pushing your turret, help you retreat, help you chase, help you do everything. It’s extremely solid. Make sure if you take ghost you also grab the mastery from the utility tree!

Ignite is overpowered since the cleanse nerf if you ask me. It’s free, unstoppable damage. Cast and forget. Will grab you kills, will grab you assists, will help you harass.

Clairvoyance and Fortify are also great choices if your teammates don’t bring them.

About me:
Hello, I am TheOneTrueAustin. Accept no substitute. You may be wondering if I'm qualified to write a guide on Malphite. I have not played any ranked matches. I have consistently maintainted around a 50% win/loss ratio. In short, I am not high elo, I do have bad matches and I do make plenty of mistakes. I also lag a lot.

The reason I have not played any ranked matches is not because I have no interest in them but rather because my current internet is very poor and this can lead to some very intense lag spikes. Until I have access to better internet I have resolved not to touch ranked, as I intend to take it seriously.

This Malphite build will be seeing some use in ranked. I'm a firm believer that there is no single way to build a character. No doubt jungle and DPS Malphite builds work and can be very effective. However, every build has its own set of drawbacks.

Jungling Malphite is in some sense a waste because you are losing out on Malphite's powerful laning potential as well as a summoner spell in exchange for smite. DPS requires that you are able to get close and personal long enough to dish out significant damage. This Malphite build is weak in that it does not provide significant physical damage.

This guide is simply meant to provide another perspective on Malphite, show another way how to play him and get your creative juices flowing. I hope you have fun and help me perfect this build! Please ask questions, critique my guide, point out typos, all that good stuff. Thank you and remember to always be ROCK SOLID.

I tried the same type of build recently because i too saw the potential of stacking magic pen, CDR, Mp5, and some AR. It sorta worked as expected, but i found it way lacking in late game damage output compared to my expectations.

I would need to use it more to see how viable i really find it compared to my standard build I use right now. Good to see opther people thinking outside of the box though.

I tried the same type of build recently because i too saw the potential of stacking magic pen, CDR, Mp5, and some AR. It sorta worked as expected, but i found it way lacking in late game damage output compared to my expectations.

I would need to use it more to see how viable i really find it compared to my standard build I use right now. Good to see opther people thinking outside of the box though.

Stay Rock Solid,

-gap81

It's pretty hard for Mal to kill anything late game if you don't build him as DPS (which I don't see the point of). You're basically an ult/debuff machine with a decent amount of AOE. This is the main reason I stopped playing him.

The only thing I don't like about this is thornmail should be situational. If they have a fed tryndamere/yi, you should grab it. I also think you should add a randuin's for your normal items.

I suppose I could see thornmail if they have several fed DPS characters and you are somehow managing to die through attack damage despite your huge defense from your other items and your ability to slow their attack speeds. In my experience though I have not encountered this.

The closest this came to happening was a TT game with an extremely fed Yi and even then he couldn't really take me on his own late game, I just had no way of killing him because of his ult's can't be slowed property. So he was able to continue feeding on my teammates and backdooring our turrets.

Randuin's omen is an interesting item, I think I could see it being good if you chose not to complete frozen heart or if you chose not to grab cooldown masteries in the offense and utility trees. I'll add it to the luxury list as a possibility.

Not sure if Haunting Guise has been edited since posting this guide, but I'm not finding it really useful. I usually now just rush Glacial Shroud, then go into boots. Sapphire Crystal with two pots usually keeps me on the lane till around six, and at the same time I can harass pretty easy. Depending on where the match is at a later point, I usually decide on whether to grab Aegis or Frozen Heart First.